


Blackbird

by LilacPessimism



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bullying, Fever, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Injury, Insecurity, Nightmares, Wingfic, Wingless Keith (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 02:30:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13378230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacPessimism/pseuds/LilacPessimism
Summary: His mother, with her lovely lilac wings, had been in love with the sky. She loved the stars so much that when she left, Keith knew that she had disappeared to dance among them.His father had been in love with flight. The wind whipping against his cheeks. The speed. The adrenaline. He left before Keith was ready to be alone.Keith was in love with both. The sky. Flight.But he could never have either.(Or, the Wingfic where, for once, Lance isn't the wingless one)





	1. Take These Broken Wings

**Author's Note:**

> I've read so many wingless!Lance fics, but none about any of the other paladins. I think that Keith's character, especially his love of flying and piloting, could mix well with the idea, so I'm going to try it out. Enjoy!
> 
> Warnings for bullying and a few somewhat-graphic descriptions of injuries/scars.

His mother’s wings were lilac. It was a gentle hue—the soft purple that danced around the edges of a winter sunset. The bruising blush that bled into the pinks and yellows of the sky. A quiet color. Thoughtful. 

Keith didn’t remember his mother’s face, or her name, or her laugh, but he remembered her wings. He remembered her primaries—so pale that they were almost white—glowing as they caught the sunlight, a faint purple sheen glimmering over the feathers. He remembered their warmth when she bundled him against her chest, the way they tickled his neck, and fluffed up in surprise when he sneezed. He remember how she used to let him run the feathers between his fingers when he was sad. 

She ever only flew at night, but Keith remembered the way the moonlight twined around her wings. When she flew, she was free. She looked as though she belonged among the stars. He remembered watching her glide through the air from his perch among a pile of blankets on the roof. He remembered how sad she was whenever she had to land. 

She _belonged_ in the sky. 

She disappeared one day, when he was four. 

He hoped that she had returned to the stars. 

***

When he was seven, he learned why they lived in the desert. 

“What’s an avian?” he asked his dad over breakfast, sounding out the word av-ee-anne and pointing to where he had found it in the newspaper. 

His father, who had been teaching Keith how to read, smiled at his son’s attempt, “That’s us, Keith. People.” As if to emphasize his point, he ruffled the feathers of his broad wings as he spoke. 

“Oh,” said Keith, directing his attention back to the article, “What’s a wingless?” 

His father’s face fell immediately, “Give me the paper, Keith.” 

Keith frowned, confused, “What? Why?” 

“You don’t need to be reading that. Give it to me.” 

“No! I was just reading!” 

“Keith!” His father made a grab for the paper, but Keith didn’t want to lose it yet, not when he hadn’t done anything wrong. He pulled it back, the pages fluttering. His father’s eyes went wide, and Keith froze as he saw what the paper was now turned to. 

The pictures. 

“Keith,” his father said, softer. 

The pictures of bloody backs and burnt skin. Of cruel words and scars etched where wings were supposed to be. 

“Keith,” his father repeated. 

The caption reading _The justice the abominations deserve_. 

He reached out for the paper, and this time, Keith let him take it. The pictures, the captions, were carefully covered by a series of folds and hidden beneath the table. 

“That’s why we live out here,” his father said, “So those monsters aren’t anywhere near us.” 

Keith threw up. 

***

His father’s wings were brown. They spanned wider than Keith was tall, and when they flapped, their movements were long and sweeping. Keith thought they looked like hawk wings, albeit larger and a little bit darker. 

Unlike his his mother, Keith’s father didn’t like to fly. Like most avians, he preferred to keep his wings free, wearing shirts with slits (and sometimes no shirts at all), but he wasn’t fond of leaving the ground. The sky didn’t call to him, not in the way it had called to the woman he loved. The way it called to his son. 

“I fell once when I was a kid,” he told Keith whenever he was asked, “Flying’s scared me ever since.” 

But that fear didn’t stop him from riding the hoverbikes. 

When Keith was little, he used to ride with his father—arms wrapped around his waist and head tucked into the space between his wings. On those bikes, his father was as fearless, as free, as his mother was in the sky, and they would shoot across the desert so fast that the landscape would lose all definition. 

On those rides, the wind would bite Keith’s cheeks and bring tears to his eyes. The world faded into a dizzying blur. His heart pounded in his chest, the beat so heavy that he could hear it in his throat. 

“Faster?” His father would shout over the wind and the whir of the engine. 

“Yes!” Keith would reply, clinging tighter. 

_Faster._

The blur of the world would fade into a single streak of color. The sand would stop biting, the howl of the wind would fade into the roar of his father’s laughter. 

“That, Keith,” he would say whenever the ride was over and the wings of his feathers were ruffled far beyond help, “Is flying.” 

When he turned ten, his father helped him fix his own bike. It was beautiful: sleek and red, purring, almost soundlessly, over the sandy desert floor. It took them three months to fix, but when it was finished they both agreed that it was the best bike either of them had ever seen. 

His father called it the _Scarlet Lion,_ smiling fondly as he watched the way his son pressed adoring hands against its side. 

He died before he could teach Keith how to drive it. 

***

It wasn’t until he began attending the Galaxy Garrison that Keith felt as free as he had on those long hoverbike rides with his father. 

In the years since his father died, he hadn’t touched a bike once. Instead, he was funneled between orphanages and foster homes, forced to face years of relentless torment. Though some families were fine, many of them were cruel. Everyone was stronger, larger, or more powerful than he was. And, because of his record, because of his knack for starting fights and being a flight risk, they could do whatever they wanted to him. 

Nobody cared. 

He forgot what freedom tasted like. 

By the time he got into the Garrison, he was tense, angry. A mess of anxiety and frazzled nerves. He kept to himself, thankful for the dress code requirement that forced everyone to tuck their wings inside their uniforms. There were fewer people to bump into then. Fewer fights. Fewer people to hate him. 

Everyone stayed out of his way. 

With nothing else to do, he spent every available moment in the simulators. It wasn’t difficult, he discovered quickly. Not much different than the hoverbikes he used to ride on with his father. It took a couple attempts, a few failed simulations and flashing lights, but within his first three months at the Garrison, Keith was flying the simulators as though he had been doing so for years. 

He rose to the top of the class quickly, his love of flight, of speed, allowing for him to climb up the ranks faster than his classmates could blink. In a matter of months, he had jumped classes—cargo to fighter—and was known across the Garrison by instructors and students alike. 

Many people praised him, complimenting him on his skills and natural talent for flight. Instructors patted him fondly on the shoulder, and other students watched him in awe, whispering the words ace pilot whenever he walked past. 

On the rare free days when students were allowed to use the recreational facilities or go out to visit the town, others begged him to join them. They challenged him to races, hoping that seeing how he flew outside the simulators, seeing even just his wings, would allow for them to gain some sort of insight to how he directed the simulators so effortlessly. 

No matter how hard they persisted, Keith always declined, offering them a sharp shake of his head before hurrying away. When he walked away, their gazes would follow until he disappeared. 

Others were not so awestruck in his presence. 

The people who hated him didn’t make themselves as evident as his adoring entourage, but Keith could see the jealousy that flushed some student’s faces when he stepped out of a simulator with a perfect score. 

He saw the way they scowled when he walked past them, could hear the whispers they shared with their friends, could feel the intent of their shoulders when they accidentally ran into him and claimed it to be an accident. 

They whispered things to him too—harsh insults that sent shivers of unease down his neck. 

There were the common names, the ones he had heard all throughout high school, that didn’t cause much rise besides a scowl and a faster stride. The cruel jabs of the students who had figured out that he was a foster child and, thus, had no family looking out for him. 

There were the students who thought he cheated, who slipped notes under his door about the drugs they thought he took, the instructors they thought had helped him. Some claimed that he had done things beyond drugs or cheating on tests. That some of the instructors—like the Garrison’s Golden Boy, Takashi Shirogane, who had been mentoring Keith in the finer points of flying—had helped him in return for special...favors. 

Those accusations made Keith grit his teeth, but he did his best to ignore them. No matter how much he wanted to retaliate, he kept his cool because he knew that even one step out of line could send him packing. It could be the end of his career. His freedom. 

He brushed the words off and did his best to focus on the simulators. When he was flying, nobody, _nothing_ , mattered. When he was flying, it was just him, just Keith, and nobody could hurt him. 

His scores climbed. 

He beat one of Shiro’s records. 

And then everything came crashing down. 

It was a free day, a warm day in April with blue skies and no clouds. Students milled around the Garrison out of uniform, excited for their day of leisure. Wings filled the hallways as students stretched them out to display them to their friends and compare wingspans. 

Keith kept to wall, head down as he made his way down the hallway away from the group that had just asked him to go flying with them. He pulled his jacket tighter around himself, ducking his head as he tried to maneuver around the wings of other students. 

“Hey!” someone shouted as their wing brushed against his shoulder, “Watch it, _terrum_!” 

Keith froze. 

_Terrum._ A universal slur word for the wingless. 

It was a word that he saw everywhere: in magazines, and books, and movies. He heard it on the news, had seen it on the signs and posters found nearly everywhere proclaiming evils and monstrosities of the wingless. 

It was the word that had been in those newspaper photos ten years ago, etched messily into the backs of the victims. 

Keith’s head filled with ringing. His vision went red. 

He threw the first punch. 

***

Shiro’s wings used to be black. Before Kerberos, they were the color of the night sky, an inky pitch that was almost blue under the right type of light. Now, after his time with the Galra, they were white. Shocking. Bleached like bone. 

And yet, despite what had happened, he refused to hide them. 

Shiro’s wings were huge. Larger, even, than Keith’s dad’s had been. The feathers were long and slim, groomed to perfection. When he flew, Keith was reminded of his mother. Shiro belonged in the air. 

Out of all of the paladins, Hunk’s were the only wings that rivaled Shiro’s in size. They fell only inches short of the Black Paladin’s, a dazzling display of gold-tinged mahogany feathers. When he flapped them, they were large enough to send a small gust of wind towards anyone who stood nearby. He had knocked items off of tables far too many times to count. 

Hunk’s wings were warm. Gentle. Beautiful without being flashy. 

Lance’s wings were the opposite. Narrow, angular, and carefully maintained, his wings were a sight to behold. Though they were nowhere near as large as Shiro’s or Hunk’s, they were still sizeable, flaring behind him with an elegant grace whenever he walked. 

Even though he was nowhere near as skilled as Shiro, Lance was a good flier as well, if not a bit arrogant—prone to attempting tricks even when he was told (multiple times) not to. Keith had watched the Blue Paladin crash so many times that he wondered how the other had yet to receive a concussion. And yet, the times that he pulled the tricks off...well...they were breathtaking. 

Pidge, on the other hand, was unbelievable clumsy. She was still in the midst of her growth spurt, so her wings had yet to reach their full length and were still tipped with bits of down. Though she complained loudly whenever someone tried to pet her soft tawny feathers, Keith knew that she took pride in how soft her wings were, and he often caught her fluffing them up with a smile. 

The Alteans had wings as well, though they were colored differently than those of the Earthlings. 

Allura’s were a soft rose color. A sunset hue that reminded Keith of his mother. They were shaped slightly different than Earthling wings—bluntly round at the tips instead of pointed—but the ease with which she flew proved that the shape had little effect on Altean flight. 

Coran’s wings were orange, the same color as his moustache. Like Allura’s, they were round at the tips, but they moved with much less fluidity than hers did. The Altean advisor’s wings were dynamic full of energy. Where the princess was able to hold her wings still when she spoke, Coran’s fluttered and flared in sync with whatever he was saying. 

Allura’s exasperated sighs suggested that grew tired of her advisor’s antics, but Keith found that he didn’t mind. 

If anything, he was jealous. 

***

“Don’t you think it’s weird?” Pidge asked, “The Arusians don’t have any wings at _all_. Even the Galra have wings!” 

Lance nodded in agreement, jostling Hunk, who was grooming his primaries, “Super weird. You’d think with how prominent they are in the galaxy they would have evolved them by now. I mean, we’ve seen how important they are on Earth.” 

“Imagine not being able to fly,” Hunk’s voice sounded pained, and he wove his fingers even deeper into Lance’s feathers. 

“It wouldn’t be a life worth living,” Pidge agreed, her wings ruffling as she spoke. 

Across from the trio, where he was carefully grooming his own wings, Shiro added, “Without my wings, I think I would have died in the arena.” 

From his own corner, where he sat sharpening his knife, Keith felt his stomach lurch. 

“It can’t be that bad,” Hunk tried to reason, “I mean. Some people don’t have wings.” 

Pidge frowned, “Forty percent of the wingless are criminals.” 

She didn’t finish the statistic. 

Lance shifted uncomfortably, and Keith watched as he tucked his wings against his back, “A wingless attacked my sister once. She was eight,” he leaned into Hunk with a heavy sigh, “She was in the hospital for a month.” 

“Some people are dangerous,” Hunk noted, and the others nodded. 

Keith’s knife clattered to the floor. 

Shiro’s gaze snapped away from his focus on his wings, “Keith?” 

There was blood welling on his fingertips. 

“I’m fine,” he hissed, trying to keep the frustration, the anger, out of his voice, “I just cut myself. I’m going to go clean it off.” 

Before anyone could protest, he stood and bolted from the room. 

_Dangerous._ The word echoed through his mind as he fled down the hallway and shouldered the door to the bathroom open, locking it behind him. 

The blood continued to drip down his fingers, but Keith ignored it, focusing instead on his own panicked gaze in the mirror. The tears welling in his eyes. 

_Imagine not being able to fly_ , Hunk had said. 

But Keith didn’t need to imagine. He knew what it was like to be stuck on the ground while everyone else soared high in the skies above. 

_Forty percent_ , Pidge’s voice whispered, and Keith’s eyes began to burn. 

He knew the statistic as well. Knew it as well as the burn scars marring his wingless back. Knew it like the word carved three times— _terrum, terrum, terrum_ —between his shoulder blades. 

_Forty percent are criminals._

Keith cradled his injured hand to his chest and swore as the tears began to run down his cheeks. 

_The other sixty are killed before they turn twenty._


	2. All Your Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some mild mentions of injuries and a brief mention of child abuse

When he was young, he had lived without fear. His parents never cared that he didn’t have wings, never treated him any differently for it. They did everything in their power to keep him safe, even going as far as to move out to the desert to avoid suspicion.

With his parents, there had been no need to hide. He had been free. Happy. Back then, life had brimmed with warmth and acceptance. With the feathers of his mother’s lilac wings folding around him, the soft hum of his father’s hoverbike. Back then, Keith hadn’t been afraid to laugh or accidentally draw attention to himself. He hadn’t even _known_ that there was something different, something wrong, about him.

His mother left, but it hadn’t been because of him. It would _never_ be because of him.

“You’ll fly one day, Keith,” she had whispered the night she disappeared, wings almost ethereal in the moon’s glow, “I promise.”

And, though home had been lonier, quieter, in her absence, he had still been happy. Safe.

Life had been good.

When his father died and he was whisked into foster care, his secret was revealed for the first time. As an orphan, with no one to protect him and a file thick with nearly every detail about him, there had been no escape. The families knew as soon as he arrived on their doorsteps and, though not all of them were cruel, none of them were kind either. Many treated him like a guest at hotel, with the forced nods and smiles of politeness. Some ignored him outright. Others...well…

Ever since he had read that newspaper when he was young, Keith had known that the world was not always kind. But it wasn’t until he ventured into the real world, until he stepped into the first house with a hopeful smile and a stuffed hippo clutched in his little ten year old hands only to be held down on the bathroom floor later that night as a steaming iron was pressed across his back, that he understood.

 _He_ was an aberration. Something detested. Something scorned.

There was no place to run. No one to show him mercy. There was only pain. Only the word carved into his back, _terrum_. Only the burns and scars that broke his smile. There was nothing but hatred, but the pictures in the newspaper, the words _abomination_ and _monster_ , the slap on the wrist that each family faced when his social worker caved and pulled him out of a house.

Keith _knew_ that none of them ever went to jail for what they had done to him.

The only mercy in the foster system, was that he hadn’t been forced to lie, to _hide_ , from anyone.

The Garrison was different.

The medical staff knew, as did the commanders. They had to, with his file and the physicals that were required of all students. They knew, they scorned him for it, but they were unable to throw him out. Not with his scores. His talent.

He remembered what one of the commanders had said to him once: something about the irony of the only wingless student in the Garrison being the best pilot they had seen in decades.

It wasn’t safe there. Not really. It was the eye of a storm. A place to pause, to wait, before the world tried to destroy him again.

But hiding his secret had been easy. All students had been forced to keep their wings tucked inside their suits as a safety precaution, so Keith had blended right in. He didn’t have to worry about anyone asking about why he never showed his wings. At the Garrison, in his uniform, he had been just as normal as everyone else. Nobody suspected a thing. Even on free days, everyone just presumed that the Garrison’s ace pilot was a stickler for rules, unwilling to break the dress code, even when it wasn’t enforced. 

It was a lie. He was a lie. Everything about his life was a lie.

But nobody needed to know that.

When he was expelled, they said that it was because of disciplinary issues. What the didn’t say, Keith noted with a scowl, was that they didn’t want him there because of what he was. That they had seen the scars on his back and agreed with them.

They knew that he didn’t have anywhere to go.

It made him sick.

He took to the desert after that, returning to a place that he had once called home. The world, he realized as he pushed that old door open, had always been awful. Nobody cared about what happened to him. Dust stirred on the floor. Loneliness settled in his stomach. 

Nobody cared about him.

 _But,_ he vowed as he stood in that house that had been empty for years, _I still do._

He had been free in that desert. Free—just like he was when he was young. It was a thrilling thing, a feeling that he never wanted to lose.

But if anyone was to know that nothing ever stayed, it was Keith.

He had been free once. Twice. He had lived in a world where everyone knew and refused to let him forget it. He had lived in a world where he blended in, one where he slipped from view and was normal, if only for the briefest moments.

He had lived in many worlds, with many different people, but this was a first. Here, nobody knew, and, while that detail in itself wasn’t unfamiliar…

Here, there was nowhere to hide.

***

“Are you sure you don’t want to join us for some aerial training, Keith?” Hunk asked, smiling as he addressed the Red Paladin, “Shiro said he was going to teach us how to do a bullet dive, and I know he wouldn’t mind another student. I mean, sure, you’re going to have to deal with Lance and Pidge squabbling over who can do it better—they fight like siblings, I swear—but it’ll still be fun!”

Keith shook his head, and something coiled in his stomach, “Sorry, Hunk, I promised Red that I’d do some maintenance on her.”

He’d promised no such thing.

“Oh,” Hunk’s wings drooped, feathers brushing the floor, “Ok. I guess if you finish early, you know where to find us.”

The thing in Keith’s stomach clenched tighter, and he tried his best to smile, “Maybe next time?”

It was an empty offer, and he knew it, but the slight spark of hope that it brought to Hunk’s eyes was enough for him to say it anyway. No. He would never fly with them. _Could_ never fly with them. But at least he could keep them thinking that it was possible.

 _Am I an awful person?_ he wondered as Hunk walked away, wings bobbing slightly as he left.

He frowned and forced himself to look away from his friend, to start walking towards Red’s hangar. Though she didn’t actually need maintenance, he had said that she did, and he didn’t want anyone to get suspicious if they checked and he wasn’t there.

 _They should know_ , he tried to tell himself, but the very thought sent shivers down his spine. He had seen what had happened to people like him. He had seen the broken necks—most were murdered by being pushed off of high buildings—the burns, the scars, the blood, that word—

_Terrum._

He knew that people could change drastically when they discovered that someone was wingless—that they could snap from kind to cruel in less than a heartbeat. He knew because he had experienced it too many times to count, had seen the light die in people’s eyes, had learned that he was safest on his own. He wanted to trust his friends, wanted to believe more than anything that they would be like his parents, like Red (who had never once cared that her Paladin could not fly), but he had no way of knowing. No way of knowing if they were exactly like the rest of the world, if they would hate him for what he was.

And in space, with six of them against one of him, there would be nowhere to run.

Suddenly, Keith was acutely aware of how warm, almost stifling, the air was. How his clothing felt a little too thick and the skin beneath his hair was beginning to bead with sweat. He swore softly under his breath as he entered his lion’s hangar.

Red rumbled at him with soft concern.

He cracked a smile—one that was almost real—as he turned to the control panel by the door and typed a code in. “It’s the jacket,” he said as the door closed and locked with a soft _hiss_ , “Everyone was cold today, so they turned the heat up.”

His lion rumbled again, gentle as he glanced up at her with a sigh.

“I guess I should be used to this, after living in the desert for so long, but even there I could take this damn thing off.”

That _thing_ , of course, was the aforementioned jacket. And, after checking twice that the hangar was locked, he shrugged it off with blistering relief. The item of clothing, despite its bright reds, abhorrent collar (an incriminating style that Lance had commented on more than once), and sweltering thickness, was one of Keith’s most cherished possessions. 

It was a large jacket, reaching to just below his hips and at least one size too big. Stripes, once white, but now more of a stained gray traced down the sides. The sleeves had to be cuffed in order for him to use his hands. On the the inside, its back was a mess of discolored fabric patches, and messy stitches.

It was a gift from his father, given to him a month before he became an orphan. His dad had tailored it for Keith himself, ensuring that the padding that he sewed into the back could pass off as wings regardless of the angle. It was a haphazard job, and anyone who turned the jacket inside-out could figure out the truth in seconds, but Keith was thankful for it regardless. Though he had grown a lot since he had received the jacket, it still pulled off the desired effect. When he wore it, the notion that he was wingless seemed ridiculous, as the padding that it provided made it seem as though there was something tucked just beneath the fabric.

His team didn’t suspect a thing.

Hunk’s theory was that he was shy. That years of foster homes had made him afraid of branching himself out and warming up to others.

Lance thought that his wings were ugly. That maybe their color was wrong or the feathers were weird. ( _“Although,” he had said one night, “You shouldn’t be ashamed if they are. They can’t be worse than your mullet.”_ )

Pidge surmised that perhaps they were just underdeveloped. That Keith was a late bloomer who was embarrassed to show it. She had smiled at the thought of him with fluffy down wings.

Coran, contrary to Lance, suggested that perhaps they were extraordinary, with vibrant reds or golds or silvers. That maybe Keith just wasn’t fond of showing off.

Allura assumed that they were scarred, as she had heard stories from the Paladins about what foster care was like and had instantly jumped to the worst conclusions.

Shiro’s guess, the closest to the truth, was that Keith’s wings were disfigured.

_“Maybe they don’t work like ours and he feels ashamed,” the Black Paladin had offered once, when the group was having a discussion in hushed whispers after they though Keith had fallen asleep._

_“I’m sure Hunk and I could build him a brace or prosthetic if that was the case,” Pidge piped in, “If he wanted. Even wings that don’t work perfectly are better than no wings at all.”_

Keith, who had been about to enter the room to grab some water, had frozen at those words.

They couldn’t know.

“At least I have someone,” he said now, glancing up at his lion as the jacket crumpled to the floor.

He was still warm, but the long sleeve shirt he wore wasn’t unbearable, and it was a notable improvement from the heavy fabric of his jacket. A weight, both physical and emotional, felt as though it had been lifted from his shoulders.

Red rumbled at him again, and this time it was a sound of warmth, not concern. He walked towards her, pausing just as he was close enough to reach out and touch her bowed head.

“You don’t care that I can’t fly,” and it surprised him at how much his throat ached as he said those words.

Red’s eyes glowed, and she began to purr. A gentle static that reminded him of the rain on the rooftop years ago on those rare nights when the desert welcomed storms.

He smiled then, a real smile, one that wasn’t halfhearted or forced. Red shifted slightly, nudging him and rumbling in a way that Keith didn’t realize was a laugh until he found himself unbalanced by her gentle push and laughing as well.

“You’re awful,” he wheezed at her in between laughs from where he was now sprawled on his back, “That could have hurt me, you know.”

She rumbled again, a softer sound, one whose message was clear, despite the lack of words:

_You are not injured so easily, my Paladin._

“Red,” he whispered, shifting in his awkward position to catch her eye. The floor sent a soft chill up his back, and, as he stared up at the gleaming red lion who towered over him, he realized that he was thankful that he didn’t have wings to prevent him from embracing the simple comfort that came from lying on the ground.

His lion rumbled at him again. A fond laugh. One that coaxed another smile to his lips.

“How about a flight tomorrow?” he asked her, “We could try some tricks. Maybe race Lance?”

Her eyes glinted, and the warmth emanating from her responding purr was the same fire that Keith felt in his own chest every time he sat down to pilot a ship.

He was glad that he was not alone.

“Keith?”

A heavy pounding sounded at the door to hangar, and the moment shattered. Keith’s heart erupted into a gallop, as he leapt to his feet and hastily picked up his jacket.

“Why is the door locked?” it was Pidge, and she sounded annoyed, “I’d get if it was your bedroom but Red’s hangar...you know what? Never mind. I’m coming in.”

Keith pulled his arms through his sleeves, too panicked to tell her to wait. His heart felt as though it was going to burst from his chest. She couldn’t find out. She couldn’t.

A soft beep sounded, then a hiss, and the door slid open.

“Oh,” said Pidge as she glanced at Keith, who had just finished adjusting the jacket as she came into view, “You look like you just ran a marathon.”

“I was training...with Red,” he winced at how fake the excuse sounded.

“Right,” Pidge’s wings ruffled as she cocked her eyebrow at him.

“How was aerial training?” he asked, trying desperately to change the subject, “Did Shiro teach anything helpful?”

She frowned, “If you’d gone you would know the answer to that question,” her wings fluffed ever-so-slightly, “But...yeah, it was a good session. I’ll need some practice, but I think I can do it.”

“I’m sure you can. Besides, Shiro is a great teacher.”

Pidge smiled, “Tell that to Lance.”

Keith winced, “He didn’t get it?”

“He crashed twice. Said that his wings are going to hurt for days.”

Keith didn’t know what sore wings felt like, but he imagined that they couldn’t feel much better than his arms did after a heavy training session with his bayard, “Ouch.”

Pidge laughed, and for a moment he could almost pretend that there was nothing different about him, that he didn’t have a secret to hide.

“It was fun,” she admitted, and he felt a pull in his chest as he saw the way her eyes glinted, “I’m sure you’ll hear Lance complain all about it over dinner—which is actually why I’m here. To get you for dinner, I mean. Not to hear Lance complain.”

He could almost pretend that he was normal.

Pidge’s wings lifted slightly as she spun around and began to lead the way to the dining hall, still chattering excitedly about Lance’s follies during training.

Keith stepped away from the hangar, trying to ignore the hallway’s uncomfortable warmth as he hugged his jacket around himself.

Almost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not everything is bad! There's still room for some warm fluff with Red!


	3. Learn to See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Keith (sort of) makes a joke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuse for how late this chapter is, and I apologize profusely. For some reason, I just had a lot of trouble with the beginning, and I ended up with a short, transitional chapter. I promise that there will be action to come soon!

True to Pidge’s word, Lance complained all throughout dinner.

“I mean, I _get_ why we have to practice aerial maneuvers and everything,” the Blue Paladin grumbled as Hunk passed him a bowl of something that smelled vaguely of mashed potatoes, “but why do we have to do them every day? I’m exhausted!”

“To be fair,” Pidge noted, “you did spend all of yesterday napping in your room and gossiping with the mice.”

Lance raised an eyebrow, his lips drawing into a dramatic pout. “I needed that nap. I’m a growing boy with growing wings who has to get up daily to train against a giant race of purple aliens. A few extra hours never hurt anyone! Especially if it helps their wings grow bigger and stronger.” He emphasized this by stretching said wings out and ruffling the feathers.

From across the table, Keith watched his friend’s lithe, angled wings unfurl. As the sleek brown feathers bumped playfully into Hunk, he felt a slight chill tingle across his back, felt his heart catch in his throat, felt his focus jump for a moment to the scars staining his skin (the surfacing memories of the iron branding his flesh, the words in his ears, the smell of his own blood, the pain, the pain, the pain), but he shoved it away as quickly as it came. He couldn’t think about things like that right now. Not when he could let something slip. Not here.

He bit out a small smile and returned the raised eyebrow to Lance. “Say that to your wings after all the crashing you did in training today.”

“You—” Lance yanked his attention away from Pidge and focused it on Keith, his eyes blowing comically wide as his brain caught up to the rest of his body. “Did you just make a joke?” He glanced back at Pidge for a moment, and then at Hunk, who dipped his head in affirmation. “I didn’t know that you even knew what jokes were!”

“I’m not a piece of cardboard, Lance. Of course I know what a joke is.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “I don't believe you.”

Keith snorted. “You don't have to believe me.”

“It’s true though, Lance,” Pidge piped in, a small grin playing across her face. “He _did_ just make a joke.”

“This isn’t even the first time,” Hunk added as he scooped a spoonful of a purple jello-like substance that smelled strongly of chicken onto his plate. “You should have heard what he said about the Altean pools the other day.”

Keith raised an eyebrow at this. He had never had a conversation with anyone about the castle’s pool, much less Hunk. He glanced at the Yellow Paladin in question, but Hunk merely ruffled his feathers and gave him a small smile that seemed to mean something along the lines of _just go with it_.

Something strange twisted in his stomach. Something tight and warm. It made his stomach churn, but not in fear, or confusion, or anger. No, he was familiar with all of those. This was...it was…

He wrenched his attention away from the sensation before he could contemplate it for too long.

_Stay strong,_ he told himself. _Not here. Push it away._

_Not here._

“I thought that Hunk would never stop laughing,” he said as he turned back to Lance, his voice shakier than he would have liked, “but his guffawing was loud enough to deafen a Galra from miles away.”

It was Lance’s turn to snort. “Guffawing? Really?”

Beside him, Hunk winced and refused to meet Keith’s eyes.

Keith scrambled for purchase as he began to lose the high ground of the conversation. “Are you jealous of my vocabulary?”

“Please.” The Blue Paladin rolled his eyes, and his wings flared—an involuntary action that Keith knew tended to happen whenever an avian was trying to intimidate someone or win an argument. “You sound like you ate a Thesaurus.”

“So?”

Another wince, this time from Pidge.

Lance’s eyes locked on him, blue gaze eerily steady as he spoke. “You’re a lot of talk, but not walk, Mullet. Are you trying to compensate for something?”

Keith felt his blood grow cold. Once again, his jacket felt too warm, too heavy. He rolled his shoulders in an attempt to get the material to breathe. He knew that Lance was probably just immersed in their argument like he usually was but...what if he knew? What if this was his way of hinting that he knew about Keith’s wingless back? The scars? What if he knew, and he was going to tell the team, and they were going to throw him out, and—

“Keith?” It was Shiro, speaking up for the first time in the conversation. Beside the Black Paladin, a spirited argument between Allura and Coran over the pros and cons of bringing the mice to a space mall fell quiet. Shiro raised an eyebrow, and the scar over his nose wrinkled in concern. “Are you alright?”

“I,” Keith felt his mouth go dry. “I—”

“He’s just embarrassed about being such a _terrible_ liar,” Lance broke in with a showy ruffle of his wings. Keith couldn’t decide if he hated or loved the way his friend’s long brown feathers glinted in the castle’s lighting.

Blue eyes locked with his. The strange sensation in his stomach coiled tighter. _He knows. He knows. He knows._

Keith curled his fingers around the edge of the table, preparing to push off and run as soon as the words fell out of the Blue Paladin’s mouth. If he was fast enough, maybe he could get to Red before they got to him. Maybe—

“Pidge _fed_ you that joke, didn’t she?”

_What?_

“What?” The Green Paladin squawked out loud, wings flaring in indignation. “I did _not_! My jokes are much better than that!”

Keith’s fingers relaxed around the table’s edge, and he felt the tension ease from his shoulders as his teammates began to bicker with each other.

Lance rolled his eyes. “The joke you tried to make the other day about my video game system says otherwise.”

“Okay, first: it _was_ funny. It’s not my fault that you’re not Matt. He would’ve gotten it. And second,” she paused for a moment to adjust the glasses that were beginning to slip down her nose. “Second: why don’t you think that it was Hunk who tried to feed him a joke? His puns are awful!”

“They’re puns though,” Hunk noted. “They aren’t supposed to be good.”

“Hunk would never commit the treachery of conversing with the enemy about jokes.” A pointed glance from Lance in his direction told Keith that he was, indeed, the aforementioned enemy. “Besides. It wasn’t a pun. And Hunk _only_ tells puns. Trust me. I should know.”

Hunk nodded. “It’s true. Also,” his wings ruffled behind him, a motion that Keith knew to be a sign of the Yellow Paladin’s amusement, “you should be accusing Shiro. His dad jokes are so bad that he deserves to be sent to jail for them.”

“Oh no,” Shiro said, “I’m staying out of this.”

“ _Shiro_ tells dad jokes?” Lance shouted, swiveling to face the Black Paladin so quickly that one of his outstretched wings caught Pidge in the face, and the other knocked into his own glass of Unnamed-But-Fizzy-Altean-Beverage, spilling it across the table.

“Lance!” Pidge protested through a mouthful of feathers, breaking into a stream of colorful curse words as Lance’s drink began to drip off the table and onto her legs.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Lance barreled on, oblivious to the mess he had caused. “Hunk?”

Hunk shrugged. “I thought you knew.” The wink that he gave Keith told him that he had thought no such thing.

Keith’s stomach tightened.

Lance’s feathers fluffed, an action that Keith had often seen performed by children when they were playing and trying to make themselves seem bigger. “Traitor!” the Blue Paladin accused. “I can’t believe—” he broke off with a yelp as Pidge upturned her own drink into his lap.

“Karma,” she said as he shot her a look of betrayal.

“You guys,” Shiro, ever the mediator, tried to say, but no one was listening to him.

“I’m confused,” this was Coran, his eyebrows arched inhumanly high. “On Earth, humans can go to prison for telling jokes?”

“Of course not,” Shiro replied, but he was ignored again in favor of Lance’s loud shout of:

“They can go to jail for _BETRAYAL_!”

Keith’s stomach tightened, and tightened, and tightened. It felt as though he was burning up from the inside.

“Be- _tray_ -al?” Hunk asked, gesturing towards a tray on the table that had once held food but now served only crumbs and drops of Lance’s spilled drink.

Allura, who had kept her composure until this point, snorted loudly, wings fluttering with her laughter.

“Et tu, Allura?”

Pidge began to laugh so hard that her shaking wings knocked over Hunk’s drink, beginning a brand new round of startled shouting and curses of betrayal.

Shiro groaned loudly in defeat.

No one noticed when Keith pulled his hands away from the edge of the table and quietly left without a word.

***

He ended up in his room.

Initially, he had planned on visiting Red’s hangar when he had fled, inexplicably, from the team dinner, but he had just been there so it would have been suspicious and the sensation in his stomach was growing tighter by the second. He wanted to hide. _Needed_ to hide until he could figure out what it was. Until he could push it away. Mask it.

_No weakness._

As he stepped into his room and locked the door behind him, he noticed that his hands were shaking. He tried to ignore the trembling, but it only got worse as he fumbled to remove his coat and his fingers caught on the sleeves.

He cursed. Loudly.

_Get a grip, Kogane._

His arms were shaking too. And his legs.

What was wrong with him?

He grit his teeth, forcing his hands to steady as he slipped, at last, out of his jacket and dropped it in a heap on the floor.

It was just dinner. Why was he so worked up?

Unwilling to trust himself with walking to his bed, he sank to the floor, leaning against the wall as he continued to tremble.

Just dinner. Just his friends. What was _wrong_ with him?

The cold, unflinching metal of the wall pressed against his back.

A memory surfaced. _The smiles of a new foster family, the Wilsons. Warm arms welcoming him in, and the cheery words to his social worker promising that he’d be taken care of this time. A barking dog. A golden retriever. The smell of cookies in the oven. Warm sheets. Heavy blankets. T.V. privileges. A full case of books. A sense of safety. Of someone who cared. A smile on his own thirteen year old face._

_That day, four months in, where he was sheparded to the basement. Where a knife was held up. Where they smiled and told him that it had all been a lie. That they were earning trust from his social worker so they could keep him longer without a check-in._ Punish _him longer. They told him that he was a monster. That being given a taste of a world that he could never have was a torture he deserved. That he could not have it. Would never fit in._

_They carved the word into his back. Terrum. Once. Terrum. Twice. Terrum. Three times. Left him there, bleeding and betrayed, on the cold basement floor._

_He had thought that he could trust them. Had hoped that he had found someone like his parents who didn’t care what he was._

_He had been wrong._

_And the breaking of that trust—the shattering of his hope—had hurt more than any words, or knives, or burns ever could._

Something cold pressed into his hand, and Keith wrenched himself from the memory, heart pounding. A startled glance down a his hand revealed a mouse, no, _four_ mice, crowded beside him.

“When did you get in here?” he asked softly as the smallest mouse, the little blue one, bumped his fingers with its nose.

The mouse squeaked, whiskers quivering as it bumped his fingers again.

“A vent?” he guessed, and the mouse nodded.

“Why?”

The question hung in the air for a long moment with neither party, mice or Keith, moving or responding. He watched as they blinked up at him, as their whiskers quivered and their chests rose and fell with each tiny breath.

_They’re like me,_ he realized as he studied them, registering for the first time that none of the mice could fly. It wasn’t that he _hadn’t_ noticed before. It was obvious, after all, that they couldn’t. He had just never really thought about it before.

The mice didn’t have wings. Not like his team. Not like humans, or Alteans, or the Galra, or countless of the other alien species that they had encountered. They didn’t have magical quintessence like the lions or the castle. Couldn’t levitate, or float, or anything like that. They were like him. Grounded.

As though they knew what he was thinking, the mice crowded closer to him. The small blue one crawled into his palm. The yellow one leaned its head against his leg. The others—gray and pink—squeaked softly and scurried up to sit in his lap.

His stomach clenched again, and he glanced away so he didn’t have to look at them. So they couldn’t see the tears forming in his eyes.

His parents had accepted him. Red had accepted him. But none of them understood. They didn’t know what it was like to look at the sky—to be _surrounded_ by the sky—and be unable to explore it on their own. They didn’t understand the longing that he felt when he looked at the stars, the jealousy that bloomed in his chest whenever one of his teammates stretched out their wings.

But the mice...he could tell by the way that they looked at him, by their careful squeaks, and the way he could hear the pink one’s heartbeat when it scrambled up to sit on his shoulder...he could tell that they understood.

When the gray one fell asleep on his stomach and the yellow one scurried off to explore his discarded jacket, the tears finally began to run down his cheeks.

He didn’t cry because he was sad, as he had when his father had died. And he didn’t cry because he was in pain, like he had after every abusive foster family had left their mark.

He cried because he was afraid. Afraid of losing the sensation in his chest, the warm, tight fondness that he had felt with every word and smile from his friends. He cried because he didn’t want for it it end. He didn’t want them to ever find out. To ever leave him. To abandon him. He didn’t want to lose that hope, that _trust_ again.

He couldn’t lose it again.

And he cried, too, because of the heartbeat on his shoulder. Because of the squeaks coming from his jacket, and the snoring on his chest, and the mouse in his hand.

He cried because, for the first time in his life, he didn’t feel like he was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the author cried because she felt bad for how sad Keith is.
> 
> But the mice are on his side at least! It's good to know that there's another group that will support him!
> 
> Up Next: Some actual action, and Keith discovers another someone who's like him (can you guess who?)
> 
> I will do my best to try to update sooner for the next update ♥  
> If you liked this chapter, please feel free to leave a kudos or a comment below!


	4. Dead of Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update! Horray!

Something was burning.

Though Keith couldn’t see the telltale spark of flames or the thick plumes of smoke, the smell was unmistakable. Sharp. Bitter. Acrid. He gagged as bile began to rise in his throat.

“Don’t move,” a voice whispered behind him, prompting a wave of chills to creep down Keith’s back despite the heat emanating from whatever was burning.

“Don’t move,” the voice said again, and Keith froze as something caught his attention.

He _knew_ that voice.

“Shiro?” 

“No,” the voice replied, higher this time, and...smaller too.

“Pidge?”

“Don’t move,” the same words as the first voice, but resonating with a lower, deeper rumble.

Keith started to reply, but a fourth voice broke him off before he could speak: “Wow, Mullet. You don’t even know who I am?”

“Figures,” a fifth voice added, sharp accent emphasizing the word. “You don’t even appreciate what little you have.”

A hand pressed against his back, and Keith couldn’t help but flinch. Whenever someone touched him there, it meant they knew, it meant—

“Don’t move,” hissed the last voice, and this time Keith shuddered. For every mission he had taken part of on the team, for every argument, conversation, and order, he had never, _ever_ , heard Allura sound so _angry_.

“I—” he started, but broke off with a gasp as the hand pressed harder against his back.

Something was burning.

And, he realized now, it wasn’t a hand pressing against his back.

The smell of charred flesh rippled through the air, the scent so familiar that this time Keith couldn’t stop the bile from rising in his throat. He gagged as his back began to burn, and he tasted smoke and blood and salt. Tears began stream down his face as he tried to jerk away, but there was someone holding his shoulders, and he found that he could not move.

“Don’t move,” a voice whispered in his ear, but whether it was Hunk or Coran or Shiro, he could not tell.

“Terrum,” somebody whispered, and, as if on cue, Keith’s arms began to burn as well. He wrenched one away from the hands holding it back, unable to bite back a whimper of pain as nails dug into his shoulder. Someone laughed, the sound echoing off of walls that he could not see. Robotically, he moved his arm out in front of him, eyes widening in horror as it came into view.

Something was burning.

_Terrum. Terrum Terrum._ Branded across his skin hundreds of times, weeping blood and pus. Cruelly proclaiming what he was. Making the truth undeniable, unavoidable.

“You’re nothing,” one of the voices whispered—either Allura or Pidge.

“A monster,” another—no...he knew that one. That voice was Lance—agreed.

Something was burning. _He_ was burning.

“Please,” Keith whispered, his voice hoarse from the smoke and screaming.

_Please._

But no one listened.

***

Keith jerked awake with a gasp, earning a startled squeak from the mouse that had been sitting on his shoulder. He could taste his heart in his throat as he held a shaking arm out in front of him, nearly crying in relief as he took note of the smooth, unmarred skin. An additional few seconds spent probing his back confirmed that there was nothing new there either, just his sweat-drenched shirt clinging to his scars.

It was just a dream.

Keith laughed hysterically, and the sound echoed through his room before fading into the corners and drowning him in silence.

His friends didn’t know. He was still safe. It was just a dream.

“The secret’s safe with you guys, right?” he murmured softly, reaching down to stroke the mouse on his stomach. It blinked its wide eyes at him before chirping and nodding in agreement.

Keith smiled. He was glad that there was someone he could trust.

“How long was I out?” he asked. He certainly felt groggy enough for it to have been hours, but his neck and shoulders didn’t hurt, and he had fallen asleep in an arguably uncomfortable position…

Before the mice could mime out some form of response, a heavy knocking sounded against the door.

“Keith?” _Thunk thunk thunk._ “Are you still alive?”

_Thunk thunk thunk._ The reverberations from the insistent knocking vibrated against Keith’s back, and he shifted away from the wall with a scowl.

As if his nightmare hadn’t been a good enough wake-up call, this rivaled a shot of caffeine injected directly into his bloodstream.

_Thunk thunk thunk._

“Go away, Lance.”

_Thunk._ “No.” _Thunk thunk._ “You’ve been in there for three hours. Pidge thinks you went into hibernation. Hunk thinks he hurt your feelings. I’m just surprised that you’ve spent so many consecutive hours in there instead of the training room.”

“Three hours?”

“Yeah.” _Thunk thunk._ “Pretty suspicious. Not your usual escape location. You don’t even spend most nights in here.”

Keith sighed. Of course _Lance_ knew everything about his sleeping habits. Did he know that he usually fell asleep in Red’s hangar? Had he been found on one of those nights where he had drifted off on the bridge while staring at the stars? Did he know that Keith tended to roam the castle halls long after everyone else had fallen asleep, unable to go to bed himself for fear of the nightmares that lurked when he closed his eyes?

_Thunk thunk thunk._ “I’m surprised you aren’t with Red.”

He did know. Of course he did. Somehow, Lance knew everything ( _although_ , Keith noted to himself bitterly, _not_ everything). He glared at the mouse on stomach. Even though they were good at keeping secrets, they were still terrible gossips.

“Can you stop knocking for a second?” He replied, the words sounding more like a bark than a pleasant request. “Why are you here?”

_Thunk._ “Nope, not until you come out. Oh, and Allura needs you. There’s a nearby Glara ship that we’re going to infiltrate for information on Zarkon’s whereabouts.

Keith shot to his feet, sleeping habits and annoying knocking forgotten. “Why didn’t you lead with that?”

_Thunk._ “I forgot.”

“No you didn’t.” Keith couldn’t help but roll his eyes as he bent down to scoop up his jacket, startling the yellow mouse as it tumbled out of the sleeve with a squeak.

_Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk._ “Did too.”

“No,” Keith replied, pulling his jacket on and reaching for the keypad to unlock his door “You. Didn’t.”

“Yeah huh. I—”

The door slid open to reveal the Blue Paladin, interrupting his protests and catching him mid knock.

“Well,” Lance said with a smile as he tried to nonchalantly tuck his hand into his pocket, “you’re looking as mullety as ever.”

Keith scowled at him. “Eat some feathers, Lance.”

“No thanks. Too fluffy.” Lance ruffled his wings as if to emphasize the point, barely managing to miss hitting Keith, who had decided to try to edge around them and escape. “Hey! Wait a second, what do you—Oh! You found the mice!”

“The found me,” Keith grumbled, swatting at Lance’s wing as he realized that he couldn’t easily get past until the Blue Paladin moved.

“They tell you anything good?” Lance asked, bending down to scoop up the blue one and bumping his wings into Keith’s knees.

“Only that you can’t keep these things to yourself.” Keith tried (and failed) once again to push past Lance’s wings.

_And these things are bigger than I thought,_ he noted in surprise. He knew that Hunk and Shiro had large wings, but Lance? Proportionally, his seemed bigger compared to his body than those of the Yellow of Black Paladins. They stretched far past his shoulders, and Keith noticed that they came surprisingly close to dragging on the ground. No wonder Lance tended to leave them unfolded. Keith couldn’t imagine the hassle of trying to stay balanced while walking with those, or trying to sleep or wrestle on clothing for that matter.

“Plachu would never say something like that. Would you, buddy?” It took Keith a moment to realize that Lance was talking to the mouse.

“Wait. They have names?”

Lance glanced up at him, blue eyes blown wide in horror. “Of _course_ they have names, Keith. What did you think you were supposed to call them? Blue mouse, yellow mouse, pink mouse, and gray mouse?”

“Yes?”

Lance sighed in exasperation. “Ugh, you’re a monster.”

Monster.

Keith flinched, but Lance was caught up in his dramatics to notice, instead grabbing the Red Paladin by the elbow and tugging him down the hall. “Allura’s gonna be so disappointed, you know,” the Blue Paladin reprimanded him. “I mean, I’m not going to tell her until after the mission because that’s obviously more important—We’re late by the way. Thanks a lot—and you better get used to food goo because she’s not going to let you eat anything else for weeks. She loves those mice more than she loves herself.

“It’s not my fault that no one ever told me their names,” Keith argued, wrenching his arm out of Lance’s grasp and storming ahead of him, footsteps reminiscent of Lance’s knocking as he thundered down the hallway.”

“No one told me! I _asked_ them. Manners go a long way, you should really…” his voice trailed off as they reached the control room and the doors slid open to reveal a rather irritated looking Allura.

“Finally,” she sighed, plucking Plachu from Lance’s hand and shooting them both a disappointed glare. “Now we can start the mission.” 

***

Keith loved the Paladin armor.

When he wore it, he knew that there was no way that anyone could discover his secret. With his jacket, there was always a slight possibility. It could rip or fall off. Someone could hug him and actually _feel_ the distinct lack of wings. It was functional, sure, but the Paladin armor blew it out of the water.

One of the best things about the armor was that no matter how close someone got, even if they _did_ try to hug him, they wouldn’t be able to feel the lack of wings. The armor was hard, much more solid than a jacket, and it gave nothing away except for the slight curvature of his back. It was almost like a shell, protecting him from the dangers of discovery.

Additionally, while keeping one’s wings hidden beneath a jacket was suspicious, tucking them beneath the armor was normal. Though they were helpful for flight, wings easily got in the way during stealth missions and combat situations, and using jetpacks made the Paladins smaller targets if enemies were shooting at them. Because of this, the team had decided that it was far more sensible to keep them protected and hidden 95% of the time.

Due to its magical Altean capabilities, the armor provided for this with ease, effortlessly taking the shape of whatever species that was using it. For the Paladins, this meant that it left a bubble of space in the back for comfortable wing storage. Even Hunk and Shiro, whose wings were almost as large as Keith, had ample room to tuck them away. All of the Paladins had agreed that the functionality of the armor was incredible, especially after Lance discovered that the bubble and the jetpack could disappear, allowing for easy wing movement if necessary.

Though Keith didn’t need the bubble of space in the back, the armor had shaped to his wishes, providing him with it anyway. Initially, it unbalanced him while he walked, making it difficult to stay graceful and light on his feet; however, he was quick to grow accustomed to it, and even on stealth missions such as this, it gave him little hassle.

“Anybody found anything yet?” Pidge’s voice crackled over the comms as Keith snuck down one of the hallways in the Galran ship, his footsteps lighter than a feather.

“Nope,” Hunk crackly voice replied, followed by a mournful “Nada” from Lance.

“Keith?” she tried. “Anything?”

“No,” he admitted, “Nothing.” He scanned the hallway, searching for a doorway, anything that might be helpful.

“Does anyone feel like something is wrong?” Hunk asked. “Like...there are no prisoners here. No sentries. I haven’t even found a computer that’s on. There’s nothing here.”

“It’s spooky,” Lance agreed. “Are you sure we have to search this place, Shiro?”

“Affirmative,” the Black Paladin replied. “The castle’s sensors picked up a handful of heat signatures and a quintessence spike on this ship. There’s something here, we just have to keep looking.”

Keith crept farther down the hallway, careful to keep his sword at the ready as he approached a turn in the passage.

“I don’t see why we had to split up though,” Lance whined. “What if someone gets caught?”

_Typical Lance,_ Keith thought with a smile as he rounded the corner, and the grin widened as he saw what stood in front of him.

His teammates continued to argue on the comms, but he ignored them as he took a step forward, narrowing his eyes as he considered the glowing door that the hallway ended at.

_Yellow,_ he noted in surprise as he paused a step away from it. _Not purple._

He had never seen anything like this on a Galran ship before.

“Guys?” he murmured, only to met with the light buzzing of static. Weird. He didn’t remember turning his comms off.

_“Closer, Paladin.”_

Keith frowned. Was the door...whispering to him?

_“Closer.”_

Tentatively, he reached a hesitant hand out towards the door, jumping back with a yelp as a sharp pulse raced up his arm upon contact. The sensation was almost familiar, a fleeting burn like shoving fingers into electrical sockets. His arm tingled with numbness.

_“Closer.”_

And then, behind him, someone began to laugh.

Keith whirled around, sword held out in front of him, but he froze as his eyes locked with a unflinching yellow gaze.

_Hello, Paladin,_ the figure said, and Keith winced as the words echoed through his head instead of emerging from the figure’s lips.

Despite the yellow eyes, this was no ordinary Galra.

“What are you?”

A laugh. _You don’t know?_ The figure stepped forward, and Keith’s stomach flipped as he noticed the long dark robes, the red marks tracing their way down the figure’s cheeks. _Think harder._

Keith’s mouth felt dry. “Haggar.”

_Mmmm._

She stepped forward again, boney hand darting out from beneath her cloaks to grasp his wrist before he had time to react. A pulse akin to that of the door danced up his arm, and his sword clattered to the floor. _I thought that you were smarter than this._

“Than what?” he hissed through clenched teeth, trying to ignore the tremors racing through his arm, the pulse of the yellow door at his back. His comms crackled with static.

_You know._

Keith’s blood ran cold. This was the woman who had experimented on Shiro. The one who had taken his arm. And now...and now? Now he had walked right into her trap without even _thinking_ about the possibility that something was wrong. He had been too distracted by a _fucking glowing door_ to even consider the consequences.

“Why me?” he whispered. Because he knew from the way that her grip tightened on his wrist that she had cornered him, not one of the others, for a reason.

_Your team thinks I’m a monster,_ the witch murmured, and Keith narrowed his eyes in confusion. How was that—

He broke out of his thoughts with a pained gasp as his armor began to shift around him, the bubble in the back constricting until it pressed against his back, as tight as a second skin, barely allowing room for movement.

Keith struggled to breathe. _She knows._

_But then_ , she whispered, second hand snaking out to cup Keith’s side, _what does that make you?_

A jolt of white-hot pain speared through his side where her second hand was cupped, and for a brief moment Keith’s vision went black. He blinked. Once. Twice. Gasped for air. And then she released his wrist, and he crumpled to the floor.

_I’ll give you a hint_ , she murmured as Keith tried to curl in on himself to protect his body from more pain, groaning as his armor kept him from doing so.

“Why?” he choked out, but when he glanced up to meet her eyes he was surprised to find that she was gone. Vanished into thin air. Behind him, the glowing of the door faded into the harsh metal of an empty wall. His armor began to return to its original state.

Her laugh echoed down the hallway.

_Here’s the hint, Keith._ He froze. How did she know his name?

She laughed again, and her next words chilled him to the bone.

_You’re just like me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well...Keith isn't alone anymore! He found someone else who's wingless: an evil, power-hungry witch who everyone thinks is awful and monstrous! Hooray!
> 
> If you liked this chapter (or if you found any mistakes, oops!) please leave a comment down below!♥♥♥


	5. Into the Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last...a new chapter appears.
> 
> Thank you so much to all of you lovely reviewers who shared your kind words in the last chapter (especially those of you who reread what I had of the fic and kindly commented about it). I appreciate all of you so much, and I'm so sorry that this chapter took as long as it did. 
> 
> As a thank you for waiting so long, please read the end notes!

As he walked back to his lion, comms dead with static, Keith wondered what he was going to tell the team.

His sudden disappearance from the comms was easy enough to explain: the Altean technology—though an amazing feat of science—was old, and it wasn’t all that uncommon for a Paladin to lose connection to the others when they were far away, underground, or on an alien planet with magnetic interference or wierd gravity. It was possible that Pidge might be a little suspicious (since they had never lost contact while on the same ship before), but he knew that giving his helmet to her to tinker with wouldn’t give anything away.

The glowing door was a little bit harder. The paladins had discovered plenty of strange occurences during their time in space, and there was nothing particularly unique about the door that made it stand out from the others. It was _odd_ , but the sentient rocks on Baldizor and the Meack, and alien race with no heads to speak of, had been just as weird. The only difference was that this time it was on a Galra ship, and Keith was the only one who had seen it. Coincidence? Keith knew it wasn’t, but he didn’t know if the other paladins would be able to figure out that it had been a trap set for him without the last piece of evidence.

_Haggar._

Wingless. The witch was wingless. Like him.

_You’re just like me._

Keith’s back ached at the mere memory of her voice, and he felt the phantom claws of panic scrabbling at his chest. The fear that his armor was going to crush him.

If the team knew that he had run into her, even without hearing what she had said, it wouldn’t take long for them to figure out what he was. He wasn’t Shiro, didn’t have the same magical abilities as Allura, there should have been no reason for the witch to come after him. Some of the team might consider the encounter to be a stroke of bad luck, but Keith didn’t doubt that one of them would be able to figure it out after thinking on it long enough. Lance’s eye for detail would catch on the fact that Haggar had never shown her wings, that she would have had to have a reason to trick Keith with a magic door and short out the comms. Pidge would find the pattern: Keith’s jacket and Haggar’s cloak, the parallel between the witch’s monstrosities the belief that the wingless were monsters. Hunk would listen to the story of the encounter, note Keith’s white face, the way he leaned a little to far into the couch to be comfortable with wings, and immediately house suspicions. It didn’t matter which paladin noticed first, the pieces were all there, and sooner or later the truth would come out. 

“So I won’t tell them,” he whispered to himself. _Couldn’t_ tell them.

“Tell us what?”

Keith jumped, swallowing a curse as the comms crackled back to life and Pidge’s amused voice drifted into his ear.

“Uhh, nothing,” he said eloquently, filing a mental note to never talk to himself ever again.

“Nothing,” Pidge repeated, deadpan. Keith could almost _hear_ her eyebrow raising.

A scowl tugged at his lips. “ _Nothing,_ ” he said again, cutting off with a gasp as his side decided to emit a burst of pain—a throbbing reminder that Haggar had wounded him during their encounter, another thing to hide from his team.

A new voice cut in: “That doesn’t sound like nothing, Keith.” Shiro. “Are you hurt?”

His side, now that its injury had decided to reannounce its presence, burned with even the slightest intake of breath, the barest shift of his position. The way pain pulsed from it with every step made Keith suspect that it wasn’t just a surface wound, and he was glad that his adrenaline had masked the sensation for as long as it had.

_But how am I going to hide it from the team?_

“I ran into a few sentries,” He replied. _Lie._ “It’s just a little scratch.” _Lie._ “I’ll be fine.” Lie.

“Are you going to need a pod?” Shiro’s voice lowered in concern.

_Yes._

“No.”

_No._ Because, if he went in a pod, they all would know. In nothing but the cryo suit, his status as a wingless would become evident immediately. There was nowhere to hide his lack of wings within the tight material, and he shuddered at what might happen once the team found out. He would be powerless. Frozen within a pod with nowhere to run. They could leave him in there forever, freeze him to death, refuse to heal his wound. And if he woke up, he’d be too disoriented, too weak, to defend himself. They could do anything they wanted to him, and he would be unable to stop them.

No matter how bad his pain was, no matter how severe the injury might seem, he could not go in a pod.

“Keith,” Shiro said again, his voice softer this time, as though he knew that information was being hidden from him, “are you sure?”

_No._

And maybe it was possible.

Maybe it was possible that the other paladins, that the Alteans, wouldn’t care at all. Maybe they would take the truth with gentle smiles and warm arms, with reassurances and acceptance. Maybe they wouldn’t care that he didn’t have wings. That he couldn’t fly, not like them. That he grew scars in place of feathers. That he was angry and broken and _different_. Maybe they could love him for what he was, maybe they didn’t really believe what they said about the wingless, maybe they would understand. _Maybe everything would be okay._

_You’re just like me._

And maybe, if he hadn’t grown up beaten and alone, if he hadn’t been cursed at, branded, carved, if he hadn’t heard the statistics, hadn’t read about the murders of his people, hadn’t seen others scoff at the stories, hadn’t heard the words _monster_ and _terrum,_ and _serves them right,_ if he hadn’t been told that he was worthless by every foster family, every Garrison officer he knew, maybe then he would have told his team the truth.

But Keith knew what betrayal felt like.

“I’m _fine_.”

And he couldn’t live with that again.

“Alright,” Shiro finally conceded, “but I—”

His sentence was cut short as a third voice filtered over the comms; sharp, loud, and irritated.

“Shiro,” Lance whined, and Keith couldn’t help but smile at the Blue Paladin’s childish tone. “Can we go yet? Not that I’m against getting Keith to open up about his feelings or anything, but this base is next to two suns and I can _taste_ the sweat dripping down my neck. I think I might be starting to melt.”

“Oh, stop whining,” Pidge replied from her own comm, but she couldn’t quite hide the amusement from her voice at their friend’s dramatics, and Keith was relieved to find that the attention was quickly diverted away from himself, both from Pidge’s teasing and Allura breaking in to inquire about whether or not humans could actually melt.

“Princess,” Lance began before Shiro could stop him, “you must be a sun too because I’m melting all over—”

“ _Lance!_ ”

Pidge cackled as Shiro swooped in at the last moment, and Keith couldn’t help but imagine the crease between the Black Paladin’s eyebrows as he reprimanded Lance and promised Allura that humans _did not_ melt, especially since they were wearing temperature regulating armor.

An offended gasp rang across the comms as Lance tried to insist that _yes, he was too melting_ and that _Shiro was just wrong because he was in a different part of the ship._. To which Pidge gleefully informed him that he was _actually on the side of the ship that wasn’t facing the suns_ , quickly leading the two of them into a match of bickering.

_Typical Lance,_ Keith thought as he finished his walk to his lion, the voices of the Green and Blue Paladins ringing across the comms. _Taking all the attention for himself._ But secretly, he couldn’t be more thankful for the way his friend had redirected the conversation, and he was glad that none of his teammates were around to see the clear relief on his face.

Now, it was likely that Shiro and Pidge would forget about the conversation they had had with him until they got back to the castle (and yes, he affirmed as he boarded Red, they definitely wouldn’t remember until they got back to the castle, because now Lance was trying to bring wing size and feather count into the argument, and Pidge wasn’t having it), and by then he would have enough time to slip into his room and hide.

_They’ll forget,_ he told himself as Shiro gave the command to head back to the Castle. A promise, not a hope. He knew that hope didn’t last.

His side pulsed with pain, and he had to bite his lip to keep from crying out. The taste of iron bloomed in his mouth. It was a small mercy, he knew, that they were still using audio comms instead of video. If the other paladins could see how his hand— _traitorous limb_ —strayed to his side, they would remember the conversation all over again.

_They have to forget._

“Keith?” Lance’s voice paused in it’s battle with Pidge, and for a moment, Keith couldn’t help but taste the thrum of his heart, hear the blood in his veins.

_Does he know?_

He swallowed once. Twice. Sounding normal as he replied was a struggle. “Yes?”

“Pidge is wrong but she won’t admit it. Tell her that more feathers make you hotter than less feathers.”

_What?_

“They do not—”

“Oh,” Keith said, relief crashing through him with such a force that for a moment he forgot all about the pain in his side. His lips relaxed into a small smile, and he pictured Lances eyebrows raised in outrage, Pidge’s lips set deep into a smirk.

“Sorry, Lance,” he laughed, even though he couldn’t care less about their argument, couldn’t be less of an expert on the subject matter. “But Pidge is definitely right.”

***

The rest of the trip back to the Castle passed without event, and by the time the Paladins arrived back, everyone (with the exception of the space mice and Coran) had joined the heated argument about whether or not wing size and feathers impacted how hot or cold an Avian was.

“Okay, so the feathers are like insulation, right?” Lance said as they docked in their hangars. “So more of them equals a higher retention of body heat.”

“You’ve said that eight times already, Lance. That doesn’t explain why Allura, who has _butterfly_ wings, runs warmer than all of us.”

“She’s an _alien_ , Pidge! Hunk, back me up here.”

The Yellow Paladin laughed, a hearty sound that echoed through the comms even though all of them were disembarking their lions from seperate chambers. “Feathers are definitely used for insulation, Pidge. Aren’t you supposed to be the Guardian of Nature or something?”

“Matt’s the biology nerd, not me! Besides, that still doesn’t explain Allura.”

“What is a—how did you say it—butterfly? Isn’t butter a type of Earth food?”

Hunk laughed again, and Keith had to stifle his own snort of amusement as he focused on trying not to agitate his wound.

_Agony. Hot and white. Nails and lightning and knives stabbing at his side._

“It’s an animal, Princess,” Shiro tried to explain, only to be drowned out as Pidge and Lance began to shout at each other again.

“It’s all about proportions,” Pidge argued. “Bigger doesn’t mean better.”

_Pain. Pain. Pain. Clawing at his stomach. His chest._

“And yet, Hunk is always warmer than you.”

“He wears a vest!”

Keith forced down another laugh, doing his best to tune out his teammates so that he could focus on wrestling his armor off without injuring himself further. He didn’t want to take it off in the hangar, especially not without his jacket nearby, but the pain in his side was beginning to concern him. Normally, he would shrug it off until he got safely to his room, but with each swallowed laugh he found that the pain was growing and his hands were beginning to shake. Neither of which were good signs.

He knew that Haggar had likely hit him with a pulse of dark magic and, while he couldn’t remedy that, at least he could make use of Red’s first aid kit to prevent it from getting any worse. The med bay, of course, was a better option, but right now Coran was settled in there, waiting as he always did in case someone got injured during a mission. He would have to wait until tonight to snag better first aid supplies if he wanted to avoid suspicion, and he didn’t want to wait until then without treating the wound to at least a small degree. 

“So? Keith always wears his jacket, always. That means he’s usually cold, and I know for a fact that his wings have to bigger than yours.”

Keith felt something dark and slimy twist in his stomach. _If only you knew._

Pidge laughed. “You just proved my point.”

Leg pieces. Arm pieces. Chest piece. Keith wrinkled as nose as he slipped out of everything except his helmet and his undersuit. Even without seeing the wound, he could identify the scent of burnt skin and blood. He grimaced and started back up Red’s ramp to fetch the medical kit inside.

Lance sputtered in indignation. “What? No I didn’t!”

_Knives in his side._

“Sorry, buddy,” Hunk interjected, a mournful timbre in his voice, as though he was breaking the news of a lost pet or a canceled vacation. “You totally did.”

“Did not! Shiro!”

Keith smiled as the Black Paladin’s voice filtered onto the comms, a smirk in the older paladin’s voice as he sided with Pidge and questioned Lance about his own jacket. The argument continued as a gentle background noise, a comforting sound as Keith reached the medical kit and began to tend to his wound.

“My jacket doesn’t cover my wings,” Lance argued as Keith procured a pair of medical scissors and began to cut away at his undersuit. “It’s just a fashion statement. For show only.”

_Snip. Snip._ As the flap of flight suit fell away from his side, it took all of Keith’s will not to gag. It wasn’t that he was bothered by blood or injuries. In fact, he had spent _years_ getting used to them and accepting them as a norm. Burns and gore didn’t scare him at all. It wasn’t the wound itself, he noted as the fabric peeled off, but the _smell_. And Keith was thankful for the bickering of his teammates as he bit back a groan.

_This isn’t a normal wound._

He knew what blood smelled like, what burnt flesh smelled like, and both of those were there, beneath the other odor. Something sharp and almost rotten.

_How?_ He wondered as he probed the flesh with gentle fingers, wondering if it was possible for infection to set in that quickly. (It wasn’t, he realized a moment later. Infection usually took at least 24 hours.) With shaking hands, he quickly dabbed at it with a pink Altean cleaning wipe and covered it with a healthy helping of gauze, but doing so did little to hide the smell in the air or the dread growing in his stomach.

What had the witch done?

_She knows. She’s like me._

Keith scowled as he noted the truth. She probably knew what would happen if his team found out. Had probably experienced it herself among the Galra. Wanted to watch him fall apart bit by bit as his secret slipped away and the people he loved tore him apart.

“Okay, Keith, help me out. Why do you wear your jacket?”

Something hot sparked in Keith’s chest. A ember of something dark, something angry.

_How dare she?_

“What?” he snapped back at Lance, too upset to regret the heat in the word.

_How dare she push away another family._

“I…” Lance replied, trailing off in confusion at the sudden aggression.

He couldn’t do this again. Not again—<

_Paladin._

Something warm, not hot, not like the burning anger in his stomach, enveloped him. Folding around him like a blanket before he could shout at Lance again or do any other damage.

_Safe,_ that sensation seemed to say. _Safe._

Keith gritted his teeth as he leaned into the warmth, shying away from the flickering in his gut, the burning in his side. He felt his shoulders relax, fists that he hadn’t even realized he had made unfurl.

A gentle purring enveloped him as the gentle warmth slipped into his veins and shoved aside the fire inside him. _Safe._

“I...sorry, Lance,” he said as Red pushed away the darkness, the rage. “I think I’m just tired. Wasn’t thinking.”

“Are you alright?” Shiro.

_Safe._

Red nudged against him gently, purring as he exited her ramp and carefully picked up his pieces of armor, piling them carefully in the corner.

“Just tired,” he promised, and it was almost true.

“I think we all might be a bit exhausted,” Allura chimed in. “Why don’t you all clean up and then we can gather for a debriefing and dinner?”

Lance groaned. “A debriefing? It’s almost midnight Earthtime.”

The warmth drew closer around Keith, until every inch of his skin felt pleasant and flushed. He yawned. Maybe he _was_ just as tired as he said he was.

“Let’s save it for the morning, Princess,” Shiro said with a small laugh, and Keith could almost catch the yawn in their leader’s own voice. “It’s been a long day.”

_The mission. Haggar. Dinner. His time with the mice._

“Yes!” Lance crowed, earning a laugh from the team. “Thank you, Shiro!” he added before trailing into a rambling train of thought about whether or not he should groom his feathers tonight or save it for the morning.

Keith smiled as he left the hangar and headed for his own room.

“Goodnight, everyone,” he said as Red’s warmth climbed up his neck, his hands, his legs.

_Safe,_ she promised.

_Safe._

***

_Fire. Flames licking up his limbs. Warm skin. Warm. Flushed. Sweat dripping down his neck._

“Red?” Keith murmured as he drifted out of a fitful sleep. 

His brow furrowed in confusion as a wave of heat washed over him. _Why was she still here?_

_Warm. Safe. Burning._

“Red?” he tried again, but his voice was choked, weak. He tried to lift his head, but the effort strained his neck as though his head had suddenly been filled with rocks, and he slumped back down with a wince. Sweat grabbed at his shirt, his blankets, adhering them to his back.

Hot. Why was he so hot? Was something wrong with Red?

He blinked open his eyes, only to shut them again as his room began to swim around him and his stomach churned with dizziness. Heat flushed to his cheeks, and he gagged as it slipped up his throat as well.

Something was very, very wrong.

Keith groaned, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t move, couldn’t call for help, could do nothing but burn. Smolder. Turn to ash. Relight. And burn, burn, burn. Pain raced through him, tore him apart, but he didn’t know if it was because of the fire or something else. Everything hurt. Heat gnawed at him, worse than that thing in his stomach in Red’s hangar. Heavier and warmer and stronger. He threw off his covers, but it didn’t help, only added interspersed shivers in between the agonizing waves of heat.

_Water,_ he decided blearily. He needed water.

But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t escape the fire. The pain. The flames, he recognized faintly as he pushed out of bed, only to collapse in a heap on the floor, started at his side. They were molten there, hot enough to char his skin. He could smell it.

Hot. Burning. Fire.

By his head, something squeaked, but that didn’t make sense, did it? Fire couldn’t squeak, could only burn. He tried to open his eyes again, tried to pinpoint the sound, but he couldn’t. His eyelids refused to budge. Too heavy to ever dream of lifting.

_Fever,_ a small rational part of his brain noted as the fire continued to burn and the squeaking grew louder.

Keith whimpered. _Now they would know._ He had to get up. Had to run. But he couldn’t move. He was on fire. The squeaking grew louder, more urgent. Something soft brushed against his hand.

Tears began to trace down his cheeks.

“They can’t know,” he protested as the flames turned to ice. “They can’t.”

But the fire was consuming him and the pain burning through him like a bullet. And the squeaking was growing softer, then louder, and then there were footsteps in the hall. The sound of his door opening. A remark of surprise. And then there was a hand on his face, his arms, his _back_.

And then everything was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who came?
> 
> Again, I wanted to thank you all so much for waiting, and to do so I've decided to create a contest. The winner will receive a one-shot about any Voltron character that they would like and about any topic (with a few exceptions that I will not write), entering is super simple, all you have to do is post a comment below that contains all 4 of the following things:  
> 1\. A real AO3 account. No anon accounts! I have to make sure that everyone is only entering once!  
> 2\. Your guess of who came to Keith's "rescue"  
> 3\. Your favorite part of the chapter/story  
> 4\. *Optional but highly appreciated* A tumblr account so that I can contact you if you win !
> 
> Out of those who guess correctly, I will randomly pick a winner! If no one guesses correctly, I will pick out of all the entries! The winner will be decided when the next chapter comes out!
> 
> Again, thank you all so much for being patient, lovely reviewers. I truly appreciate you! If you want to keep up with me or ask any questions about either of my fics, please feel free to follow me on tumblr @lilacpessimism :)


	6. For This Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Keith has a fever and multiple people cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time for the first reveal!
> 
> Multiple people guessed correctly, but the winner of the contest is...
> 
> (drumroll please)
> 
> ...
> 
> ...
> 
> You'll find out at the end of the chapter! Can't ruin the surprise! ;)
> 
> Enjoy!

When Keith was eight, one year after seeing the pictures in the newspaper, his father told him the truth.

“I’m sorry,” he said one morning as they sat down for breakfast. “I’m so sorry, buddy.”

Confused, Keith had looked up from his bowl of cereal (the sugar type, the kind he only got to have on special occasions). His mop of black hair fell into his eyes as he tilted his head. “Huh?”

His dad looked at him for a long moment, something impossible for an eight year old to name glistening in his eyes ( _fear, pride, grief, anger, hope_ ). “Do you…” he said, trailing off with a shake of his head. “Do you remember the newspaper, Keith?”

Keith considered the question for a brief second before answering through a mouthful of cereal: “The one with the funny dog comic?”

If he hadn’t been eight at the time, Keith would have seen the way those words broke his father’s heart.

“I…” he said, glancing at his son. At the wide purple eyes, the unruly hair curling at the nape of his neck, the milk dripping down his chin. At his cherub cheeks, the NASA shirt that was four sizes too big but loved more than any other article of clothing. He looked at his son, his eight year old son who had not asked for this, did not _deserve_ this, who did not know that the world saw him as a monster.

That day was the first time Keith saw his father cry.

“Dad?” he asked softly, lowering his spoon as he noticed the water in his father’s eyes. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” his father replied with a shake of his head, voice so soft that Keith had to strain to hear it. “No. _Never._ Never, Keith.”

Five words whose importance were lost on him until it was too late.

“Okay,” Keith replied with the nonchalance of a child who didn’t quite understand. He shoveled another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. “It’s a good comic though.”

“It is,” his dad replied, a halfhearted smile sprawled across his lips, “but that wasn’t the newspaper I was talking about.”

Keith narrowed his eyes. Took another bite of cereal. “The ‘ck un?”

“Swallow, bud. Don’t talk with food in your mouth.”

Keith obliged and took a large swig of orange juice (another special occasion treat) before repeating himself. “The duck one?”

His father looked at him again, the look from before resurfacing in his eyes. “No, Keith. Not the one with the story about the baby ducks. The…the one with those pictures in it.”

The pictures? Keith tilted his head. Most newspapers had pictures.

“The one,” his father started, the water glistening in his eyes, “the one that I wouldn’t let you read. Last year.” He shifted his wings, feathers flaring with discomfort as he bit out the words.

Last year? Keith didn’t remember the newspapers he had looked at _last year_. He screwed up his nose, searching his dad’s face for a hint, glancing away only as a ruffle of feathers distracted him. His mouth parted into a small “o”.

“The avian one?”

Innocent. Naive. He wished he could go back to that time.

“Yes,” his father said, setting down his spoon. It was then that Keith realized that he hadn’t touched his own cereal. “Do you...do you remember what I told you when you read it?”

The lingering dregs of orange juice suddenly tasted incredibly bitter in his mouth. “You said to give it to you. After I said, um, wingless?” A wrinkle formed between his eyebrows and an old question resurfaced. “What’s a wingless?”

His father’s throat bobbed once, twice, before he responded. “It’s someone without wings.”

_Oh._

Keith leaned against the back of his chair, remembering how his father had said that he was just a late bloomer when he had asked where his wings were. An image brushed through his mind, one of newspaper ink, blood, and words etched across backs. Something twisted in his stomach.

“Dad?” he whispered.

His father sighed, and the first tear broke free, rolling down his cheek. “I...you...I haven’t been honest with you, Keith.”

Suddenly, sugar cereal didn’t look so tasty anymore.

“I don’t have any,” Keith said, a wobble in his small voice, “do I?”

“No,” his father replied.

If there was one moment that Keith could pick in his life, _any moment_ , where he wished he could go back. Any moment that he wished hadn’t happened. Any moment that he wished he could erase...it was that one.

_No._

One word. One single word. A breath of air. The smallest word, the worst moment of his life.

“Oh,” Keith said.

And then he began to cry.

He cried because his father had lied to him, because he didn’t have wings and never would. He cried because he remembered his mom, those lilac wings in a twilight sky, because he remembered her promise— _you’ll fly_ —but now knew that it was wrong. That _she_ was wrong. He cried because he remembered the pictures in the newspaper, the fear in his father’s eyes when the pages had flipped open to those bloody backs, those awful words. He cried because he was confused, because his father was angry but not at him. He cried because orange juice and sugar cereal were for special occasions, but this wasn’t a special occasion at all.

_No._

Warm, strong arms wrapped around him, but they didn’t help, couldn’t stop the tears. He continued to cry as his father told him the truth, about what he was and what people did to others like him. He cried as he learned why they lived in the desert, cried as his father told him that he loved him and that he would keep him safe until his dying breath.

“I’m sorry,” his father whispered, and he was crying too.

Keith closed his eyes and tucked his face against his father’s chest.

The orange juice and cereal sat on the table, forgotten.

***

When Keith woke up, the first thing that he noticed was the warmth.

It was special type of heat, he realized after a few moments of consciousness, in that it came from three separate places. One was familiar: the gentle purring of his lion. One was concerning: the flush of fever that he could feel across his cheeks. One was confusing: the weight of a blanket, even though he could have sworn that he’d thrown his blankets off earlier.

The second thing he noticed was that he was no longer in pain.

His side didn’t pulse with every breath, didn’t send a bolt of agony through his veins with every movement. He could hardly feel it at all. Outside of a faint itch and a slight sensation of pain no worse than that of a bruise, it wasn’t that bad.

An alarm bell began to ring in Keith’s mind.

The third thing he noticed was the bed.

The bed. Even though he remembered falling on the floor. Even though he remembered the squeaking of mice around his head. Even though this wasn’t his mattress, was too hard to be his mattress. Even though he remembered the footsteps…

The alarm bells turned into a siren.

_The footsteps._

Keith’s eyes snapped open.

The bright lights of the medbay glared back at him, and he felt his heartbeat spike in his chest. His hand strayed to the injury at his side, and he choked on breath as his fingers brushed against bandages and followed them all the way around his torso.

_Someone knows. They know. They have to know._

Bile rose in Keith’s throat.

_They know. They know._

And now that they knew, the ways that they could hurt him were endless.

Keith felt the prick of tears at the corners of his eyes.

Would they throw him out of the airlock? Freeze him eternally in a pod? Attack him with the training bots, with the bayards? Drop him on a hostile planet? Beat him and brand him, heal him in cryo, and then do it all over again?

_No._

He wouldn’t let them. He _couldn’t_ let them. He had Red, he had the mice, if he was sneaky and fast he could escape before they could catch him. He could fly away, find some planet where wings didn’t matter. Where no one knew the word for what he was.

Wingless.

_Terrum._

Footsteps sounded to his right.

His heart pounded in his throat.

He needed to leave _now_ if he wanted to escape unharmed.

The footsteps drew closer, but before whoever they belonged to could touch him, _hurt_ him, he surged up, ignoring the gasp that the action pulled from his chest. The warmth of blood and the undeniable tearing of stitches.

“Keith?” Concern brimmed from the voice, but Keith had heard enough false promises to know that the way someone said something meant nothing. “My boy, please, you’re going to—”

But Keith didn’t let Coran finish.

He stumbled out of bed, ignoring the way his hands shook with fever, the way his side, stitches now torn, was aching anew with pain.

“Stay _away_ ,” he growled, taking an unsteady step backwards. The words caught in his throat.

He couldn’t do this again.

The advisor held his hands up, revealing empty palms, but he didn’t move. He kept his wings tucked, a technique that Keith knew was used to make one look smaller, like less of a threat. “You’re alright, Number Four,” he said softly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Keith scowled. How many people had told him that?

How many had lied?

He shook his head and took another step backwards. And then another. Felt his back press up against one of the pods. He flinched at the cold.

“That’s what they always say,” he murmured, a slur to the words as the fever crept into his mouth.

Coran’s face fell, and he moved to take a step forward, stopping as Keith flinched. “I swear on Altea that I will not hurt you.”

_Lies. Lies. Lies._

Keith eyed the door, heart pounding. But there wasn’t enough space, not with Coran so close. He couldn’t get out, not before the Altean could get to him. If his legs weren’t trembling with fever, he might have been able to fight his way out, but as it was he could barely stand, and it was going to be struggle enough to get to Red.

“Please,” he whispered, voice breaking as tears began to drip down his cheeks. “Please, just make it fast. Before the rest of them know. I don’t—” but before he could finish, Coran moved.

Keith opened his mouth to scream, and he felt his whole body flinch as warm arms wrapped around him and pulled him close. He struggled, straining against the tight grasp, against the hands on his back. “Get away,” he hissed hoarsely, but the arms did not loosen, only tightened their grasp.

_Terrum. Terrum. Terrum._

Keith pulled against the arms, bared his teeth. He felt the tears running down his cheeks, felt the stitches tear in his side even more. He could feel the scars on his back, the panicked _don’t hurt me_ in his head.

This was it.

But then, Coran did the last thing he expected.

“I’m sorry.”

Keith blinked. “What?” He couldn’t remember the last time someone told him that they were sorry.

“I’m sorry,” the advisor repeated.

_“I’m sorry,”_ his dad said, all those years ago.

Keith pushed away, and this time the Altean released him from the hug. “I…” he said as he looked at Coran, noting the tears on his normally joyful cheeks. “Why?”

Coran offered him a small smile. “Because I don’t think that anyone has said that to you for a very long time.”

Keith opened his mouth to respond, but all he could taste was the fever on his tongue. Tears burned down his cheeks and exhaustion washed over him as his anger finally faded away.

_They haven’t._ He wanted to say. _Thank you. Thank you._

But instead he looked at the advisor, at the only person on the ship who knew his secret, at the first person since his dad who hadn’t scorned him for what he was. He looked at him, and suddenly he was eight years old again on the worst day of his life with a glass of orange juice on the table.

Suddenly, he was just a kid. A beaten, confused, scared kid.

So he looked at Coran and asked a question that he hadn’t asked since the day his dad died:

“Can I have a hug?”

“My boy,” Coran replied, closing the distance between them before Keith could even take a breath. “You don’t even need to ask.”

***

“So you won’t tell them?” Keith asked half an hour later. Twenty minutes after he had stopped crying and the hug had ended. Fifteen since Coran had urged him back onto the medical cot. Ten since his wound had been redressed. Five since he told the advisor about how the wingless were treated on Earth. And two since the advisor had placed the space equivalent of tea in his hands.

“It’s not my secret,” Coran replied. “I’d have to be slimier than a Gloznip to go against your wishes like that. Though I have to wonder, why do you feel as though you can’t trust them? They are your team.”

Keith frowned and took a small sip of his tea. It tasted a bit like a mix between woodsmoke and strawberries. “You’ve seen my back.” He had already told Coran about his scars after the Altean had brought them up while redressing his wounds. Needless to say, the advisor had not been pleased to learn about their origins, and Keith had learned a handful of new alien expletives.

“I thought I could trust a lot of people,” he said slowly. “And I was wrong. And...I can’t be wrong again. Not about them.”

The advisor returned his frown. “Do you think that you would be?”

“I don’t know,” Keith admitted, taking another sip of tea. “I hope that I wouldn’t be, but my hope’s meant shit since I was ten. They could be okay with it, but there’s a big chance, a _much_ bigger chance, that they’ll be just like everyone else.” 

_Even wings that don’t work perfectly are better than no wings at all,_ Pidge had said.

_A wingless attacked my sister once._

_Some people are dangerous._

_Forty percent of wingless are criminals._

He shook his head and met the advisor’s eyes. “People like me are killed for what they are.”

_The other sixty are killed before they turn twenty._

“I’m sorry, Number Four,” Coran replied because there was nothing else to say.

Keith shook his head again. “Not your fault.” He took another sip of the tea, wincing as the hot liquid poured down his throat. A thought nagged at the back of his mind. 

“Coran?”

“Yes, my boy?”

“How were the wingless treated on Altea?”

The Altean regarded him for a long moment, and he tugged at his moustache thoughtfully before responding. “I had a good friend who was wingless.” _That explained advisor’s openness towards what he was._ “Wingless people, we called them Auelaes after a type of Altean ground-flower, were far rarer than they appear to be on Earth. They were not treated as poorly as you were, though they were not revered. Pity...I suppose that’s the word for it. Alteans pitied those without wings, but they never harmed them, even after we allied with Daibazaal.”

“Daibazaal?”

Coran nodded. “The Galra.” For a moment he looked almost wistful, but his eyes turned sad as he glanced a Keith. “Their war-like society had little space for those who could not fly.”

“Oh,” Keith said quietly.

Coran shot him a sad smile. “But we’ll not worry about that, shall we? You have people here who will protects me. I know that Red and those mice love you dearly, and I myself would stand against the team on your behalf.”

“Against Allura?” Keith said doubtfully.

“Even Allura,” the advisor agreed. His smile lost some of his sorrow. “Though you might find that the princess is quite similar to her mice.”

Keith returned the smile.

The conversation stilled, lapsing into a comfortable silence, and Coran took the time to take Keith’s temperature and pile another blanket on his lap. Keith let him, content to sip his tea as the advisor bustled around.

“You’re at 102,” he announced as the Altean thermometer beeped, “That is high for humans, is it not?”

“Yeah,” Keith admitted, panic rising inside of him as he realized that there was not way that his ailments could disappear before the team found out tomorrow.

_Fuck._

“Don’t worry yet,” Coran insisted, sensing the apprehension. “You never went in a pod, so there are no scans for the team to see. As far as they know, you never got injured, all you have is a fever. I cleared your infection with a few drops of Hawlox ointment, and with some painkillers and limited straining, it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll tell them tomorrow that you have contracted a fever, and you can remain in your room while you heal.”

“Thank you,” Keith replied, even though the two words didn’t amass to half of what he was feeling.

Coran gave his shoulder a small squeeze. “Not a problem, my boy. Now! Let’s get you back to your room, you do have a fever after all, and we can’t have you getting worse.”

Keith nodded and downed the last few dregs of his tea before standing. His legs trembled with the action, but the advisor was there to steady him.

The Red Paladin leaned into him gratefully, yawning as exhaustion washed over him and his fever flushed across his cheeks. Shivers ran down his back as they walked through the castle halls and sweat beaded on his neck, but despite everything, he couldn’t help but smile.

“Goodnight, Keith,” Coran said as he stopped outside the paladin’s room, opening the door so that he could stumble inside.

“Goodnight,” Keith slurred back, collapsing into his bed before the Altean could even close the door.

The nightmares didn’t touch him that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Keith has someone on his side that isn't a mouse or a sentient robot! I'm so excited to finally reveal that it's Coran who found out, and I hope that everyone is pleased with the turnout (I know I was! I almost made myself cry with the parallels between him and Keith's dad). I do have to say that while /this/ reveal had a very positive reception for Keith, not everyone is going to react the same way, and there is at least one character who isn't going to take the truth well. Any guesses? (And before you worry too much...I promise, this fic has a happy ending!)
> 
> If you enjoyed the chapter, please leave a comment below! Also, if you'd like to stay updated on chapter updates, or if you want to chat with me about Voltron in general, please follow me on tumblr @lilacpessimism
> 
> ♥♥♥
> 
> Okay...now onto the part that more of you care about:
> 
> I had a lot of contest entries, so thank you all for guessing! Of course, it was Coran, so only those who predicted that our lovable Altean advisor was going to find out were eligible to win. I used a random number generator and the winner is...
> 
> Bluebeam246! Congrats!
> 
> In order to avoid spoiling the chapter for you, I'm going to wait 2 days before contacting you on tumblr to discuss the specifics of your prize. If you do happen to read the chapter before then, please do reach out (either in a comment below or on tumblr) with the character and topic you'd like your one-shot to be about! (please note that I will not, under any circumstance, write smut, and I would prefer not to write romantic parings if possible)

**Author's Note:**

> Poor Keith! Please remember, the team isn't actively trying to be mean. They don't know that the subject is so personal to their friend, and they've grown up in a world where the wingless have never been seen as anything other than monsters. 
> 
> As for the fic: if you enjoyed it, please leave a comment or a kudos below! Feel free to check out my other fic, Clipped Wings, (which coincidentally has nothing to do about wings) as well!


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